Game On

First Look at Your New Favorite Game of Thrones Characters Has a Confusing Catch

We’ve been writing about an exciting new group of Game of Thrones Season 5 characters for months now. The bastard daughters of Oberyn Martell: Obara (Keisha Castle-Hughes), Nymeria (Jessica Henwick), and Tyene (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) are known collectively as the Sand Snakes, and we finally have our first look at them in costume. (Sorry! We can’t embed them here!) Two of the actresses (Henwick and Laurenti Sellers) and their stunt doubles are shown hard at work practicing with whips, swords, daggers. Which brings us to why the Sand Snakes are going to be your favorite. Think of an irresistible combination of Ellaria Sand . . .

These photos do, however, reveal one confusing element about the Sand Snakes. What in seven hells is going on with their breastplates?! To paraphrase Val Kilmer on the set of Batman Forever, “Are these nipples?!” Yes, the Sand Snakes definitely have nipples, or at least well-defined, shall we say, “peaks” on their armor. This costuming decision is not the most revealing in Game of Thrones history, but it is a little puzzling. The snakeskin breast plates are clearly modeled after the armor Oberyn wore to fight the Mountain. Only his version was definitely nipple-free.

And when we look at the Unsullied, the other Game of Thrones characters who are famous for wearing leather, we see that their armor, too, is nipple-free. Though we can’t say as much for their shields.

Then again, maybe we shouldn’t look to the Unsullied for advice when it comes to protecting the pecs.

Yes, it’s true that George R.R. Martin wrote the following line for Cersei: “These Kingsguard knights are as useless as nipples on a breastplate.” But the Sand Snakes won’t be armored in every scene. I imagine the whips, and daggers (both physical and verbal), will soon put the latest Game of Thrones nipplegate out of your mind entirely. In short, don’t throw the babes out with the boob armor.